Opening the new year with a continued exposition of Ephesians, the sermon turns to Ephesians 1:5-6, verses that the preacher frames as an answer to a universal human ache: the ache for meaning. The sermon begins by contrasting a life lived merely to survive with a life ordered around God's purpose, illustrating the difference with Charles Colson's account, in Kingdoms in Conflict, of prisoners of war in a Nazi camp. So long as the prisoners were building something — even a grim sewage plant — the labor, however brutal, retained a kind of dignity, because it moved toward a goal. But when the structure was bombed and the guards forced the men to shovel sand back and forth to no purpose at all, several prisoners broke: some screamed until they were beaten to death, one ran into the electrified fence, others simply lost their minds. Meaningless labor, the sermon argues, destroys the soul in a way that even hard labor with a purpose does not — and much of the world, it suggests, lives exactly this kind of purposeless existence, working merely to survive without ever grasping why.

Against that backdrop, the sermon turns to Ephesians 1:5-6 to unfold what it calls the "goal of our destiny" and the "ground of our destiny." The first movement distinguishes election from predestination: election (v.4) emphasizes God's sovereign freedom to choose whomever he wills, while predestination emphasizes the purpose toward which the chosen are set apart — namely, adoption as sons through Jesus Christ. To be adopted as God's children means becoming heirs of everything that is God's, bearing a family resemblance to the Father, and receiving every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms, culminating in the promise of Revelation 3:21 that those who overcome will sit with Christ on his throne. The Holy Spirit, given now as a deposit, is the guarantee of this inheritance, and Romans 8:14-17 confirms that those led by the Spirit are God's children and fellow heirs with Christ — heirs who are refined through present suffering into Christlike character rather than shielded from it.

Sonship, the sermon continues, entails a family likeness expressed in two virtues that Ephesians pairs repeatedly: holiness ("holy and blameless," v.4) and love (Ephesians 5:1-2, "be imitators of God... and live a life of love"). The sermon insists these two must never be separated: love without holiness collapses into compromise that fails to truly build people up, while holiness without love hardens into legalism. Both together are what make God's children look like their Father and draw others to Christ, who is himself both love and truth.

Yet sonship, the sermon argues, is not the ultimate goal — it is a means to a still higher end named explicitly in verse 6: "to the praise of his glorious grace." Here the sermon leans on C.S. Lewis's reflection on the Psalms: Lewis initially found God's repeated call to be praised unsettling, like an insecure person fishing for compliments, until he noticed that all delight naturally overflows into praise — lovers praising each other, viewers praising a beautiful landscape, a tennis fan unable to stay silent watching a Grand Slam final between the world's best. Praise, Lewis realized, is not flattery demanded but joy completing itself; withholding it leaves something unfinished in us. Quoting Augustine — "our hearts are restless till we find rest in thee" — the sermon presents praising God as the very thing for which human beings were made, and therefore as the source of the abundant life and joy promised in Psalm 16.

The sermon's second movement addresses the ground of this destiny: it rests solely on Jesus Christ, "through Jesus Christ" (v.5), who alone secures redemption and forgiveness of sins "according to the riches of his grace" (v.7), as 1 Peter 3:18 and John 1:12 confirm — Christ, though sinless, died for the unrighteous to bring us to God, and all who receive him by faith are given the right to become children of God. This access is appropriated by faith, which the sermon ties directly to the Lord's Supper being observed that morning: believers come to the table remembering that Christ's body and blood purchased their adoption.

Finally, the sermon presses into an even deeper ground: "according to the purpose of his will" — a doubled phrase (purpose and will) that the sermon reads as emphasizing not merely that God willed our adoption but that he delighted in it, freely and joyfully choosing to send his only Son to die. This divine willingness is illuminated by the Son's own willingness in Gethsemane — "not my will, but yours be done" — showing a Father who, though he dearly loved his only Son, rejoiced to give him up "so that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." The sermon closes by urging the congregation, as it enters a demanding new year of ministry (including a new church plant), to entrust themselves entirely to this Father who predestined them in love, and to find their strength not in their own preparations but in the settled, joyful will of God.

Bible Verses Used

• Ephesians 1:4-6: The sermon's central text; verse 4 (election) is distinguished from verse 5 (predestination to adoption), and verse 6 ("to the praise of his glorious grace") is identified as the ultimate goal of that adoption.

• Ephesians 1:7, 1:11: Cited to show that redemption and inheritance come "in him," according to the riches of God's grace and the purpose of his will.

• Ephesians 5:1-2: Used to show that being God's beloved children means imitating him by living a life of love, paired with holiness.

• Revelation 3:21: Quoted to picture the believer's future destiny of reigning with the victorious Christ.

• Romans 8:14-17: Used to establish that those led by the Spirit are God's children and heirs with Christ, refined through shared suffering.

• 1 Peter 3:18: Cited to explain the mechanism of adoption — Christ, the righteous, dying for the unrighteous to bring us to God.

• John 1:12: Used to show that receiving Christ by faith is what grants the right to become children of God.

• Psalm 16: Referenced to describe the "abundant joy" that flows from being in God's presence as his child.